29 July 2015

Cruise trivialities

All work and no play make 52 people on a ship a dull bunch.
So even though some days are pretty full-on, with cores coming in on deck in
rapid succession, only beaten in speed by the cores coming in from the core
scanning lab, we do have (make?) time for some fun. Sometimes that fun is
someone else’s job; for instance, we spent an afternoon helping out our
resident photographer and filmmaker with a stop-motion animation of a
retreating ice shelf, the sediment that produces, and of a little cartoon boat
coming in and taking a core out of these. That was fun! And a mountain of
editing work for the poor photographer.

My hand for scale: the protagonists of the stop-motion animation

Making dropstones fall out of icebergs

We also had some visitors; while we were coring in the
middle of the North Sea, suddenly a pigeon appeared. It turned out to be a
racing pigeon, not doing very well on a rave from Thurso to Dorset. When it
landed on deck, it immediately tried to drink from the puddles there, but the
water had come out of the vibrocorer, so it was salty. When the bird retreated
for a breather in a corner of the aft deck we brought it some freshwater and
some breakfast cereals. The next morning it was gone! It may have made it home.

Chris with the not-so-successful racing pigeon

This pigeon was only the first of (so far) three distracting
birds; the night shift was visited by a sandpiper, and we had some sort of
finch entertaining us, when we were still in the central North Sea. Far to fly
for such a little thing! He got the water-and-cereal treatment too, but he
vanished within an hour. I hope he’s well.

The night shift are a sporty bunch; they have a habit of
making balls of gaffer tape and playing football with it, and they even taped
up a toilet roll to improvise a rugby ball. And they have two ukuleles in their
team. Neither of the owners had any idea the other one would bring their
instrument! There seem to have been ukulele play-offs on deck.

At the end of our shift we sometimes get to see a nice
sunset, and we’ve also seen some dolphins, albeit not anywhere as many as last
year. But we do get oil rigs instead! Not quite the same, but these things van
be rather impressive, especially during sunset.

Small bird (some googling makes me think it is a chiffchaff) having a rest in the wet lab

Last year I barely visited the bar. We had one night there
to celebrate a birthday, but apart from that I tended just to go to bed after
my shift. This year is a bit more frivolous! If you sleep during the day you
need more sleep, it seems, but as I sleep during normal hours this year I can
afford to sometimes have a pint with the team. We had some nice ones on the
forecastle deck, admiring the scenery, but these days maybe over; by the time
the bar opens it’s now dark, as we’re a lot further south than previously. But
a beer in the bar is nice too! And if you have Chris you never run out of weird
stories. What a life that man has lead!

I have even seen three movies already; we started with Unforgiven (or the Unforgiven, I can't remember"; it being a shoot-em-up it's not quite my cup of tea but it's nice to do some non-work-related things with your team mates once in a while. The next one up was the Cook, the Thief, his Wife and her Lover; the third time I saw it, but still well worth it. And we saw Black Sheep; a must-see if you have a sheep farmer in your team. It's the silliest movie I saw in years but it was fun! And I hope to see 127 hours before we get back to Southampton. Time is runnign out but we might manage!

And then there are of course the standard activities: reading and
running. I’m reading one book in my Read the Classics series,
and one Welsh book; the first one I read which is written for the general
public and not for Welsh learners, and which I read having A levels in mind.
I rely heavily on the dictionary, and I should start having a go at trying to memorise what I look up as I keep getting back to the same words. And I try to run 7k every second day; during the first
transects that wasn’t happening as the cores came in thick and fast, but now on
Transect 2 I manage. And the treadmill has in the meantime become a battle ground; the nightshift invented the "1k challenge"; a competition in who can run a kilometer the fastest. I'm in, of course. I'm currently the leading lady (of three), but there are still two men in front of me. One is out of reach with 3:38 (mind you, the treadmill starts at 0.1 km/h and you have to crank it up manually), but the other one, Tom, "my" transect leader, is only two seconds ahead. I am keen to overtake him before the cruise is over! And the photographer is only six seconds behind me; I will have to keep fighting him off too. Watch this space for the final scores!

About Me

This blog started as a tool to keep my Dutch friends informed on my whereabouts when I moved abroad. It quickly also became an external memory for my own use. It largely failed as a stage for discussions on whatever is worth discussing. And it has become a way of sharing my scientific knowledge with a lay audience. And who knows, it could become even more! And whatever it is you are looking for among all this: welcome.